Pong and other card games (2018)

This project is a recreation of a 1991 experiment by Loren Carpenter. Audience members are given cards with one yellow side and one red side. On a screen, they play games like Pong while a camera films and the system judges how many red and yellow cards are being held up.

In one game, players control a rocket flying through a tunnel and must avoid asteroids in the way. The vertical position of the rocket is directly related to the ratio of red/yellow paddles. This means that if everyone held up the red side to move down, the rocket would immediately crash. Instead, a “subconscious consensus” is formed between the audience, and there is “an amoeba like effect” (Carpenter in All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, Adam Curtis, 2011, BBC)